He tells me he’s done Tai Chi and it has made him strong. He’s as fit as a thirty-year-old. Yeah, I say. Pete looms there like a post. He can throw someone twenty feet. Can knock them down and stop their heart. Just like that. He beams at this major life achievement.
Great, I say.
He stands there grinning, saying we must get together again. I can’t tell if he’s just being super friendly or if he’s hitting on me. I say I’ll be in the city a lot for the next couple of weeks. Years and years, I think. I’m almost at my limit with all of this.
I climb aboard the boat, waving. He’s still there under the dull yellow dock lights. So I open the lock, slide back the hatch and stick my head out again. He’s still standing there.
“Good night,” I call.
“Good night,” he replies.
I pull the hatch shut and lock it. Pete doesn’t move.
I turn on the radio for company and it’s Prince singing again. Then I see the letter from Tara. It’s fallen out of my backpack onto the floor. The white envelope is still unopened. Back in my pack it goes, because I don’t care about her news or her requests. She’s been doing this for years, finding out wherever I am and sending a letter, and asking questions and demanding I write back, which I feel compelled to do. And then inviting herself for a visit. Arriving unannounced.
Never waste time with anyone who doesn’t lift you up. I think of Samuel, of how years melt away. Of how being twenty-nine-coming-up-on-thirty feels so old when it really isn’t — but it isn’t young either. Time is sneaky that way, how it moves along and you don’t realize.
* * *
I remember the hot July three years ago. I flew into Kentucky from Vietnam. I’d been teaching Buddhist nuns English but I had been accepted into the Ph.D. program in Vancouver so I’d finished my contract early. The hard part was leaving Viola, my roommate, behind. She had no idea what to do with her life, so she was teaching ESL until something better came along. She just didn’t want to go back to Campobello Island where her father was slowly dying. The person she was at home repulsed her. She wanted to see the world.
But I had seen enough of the world and was happy when the plane brought me back over the ocean to the U.S.A. for rest and relaxation with my friend Gail from high school. Her husband was in Moscow for the summer, learning Russian. We thought it would be a good time for a long visit. We planned to drive home together — she would visit with her family in Nova Scotia and then I would head off in my pickup truck to university in British Columbia to start my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.
Saigon–San Francisco–Chicago–Lexington, and there was Gail, all tanned and summery. In the car she told me Tara was flying in next week. Tara was going to drive back with us. I was quiet, she was quiet, and then Gail said she was sorry — Tara had announced she was coming and had already bought a ticket. When Tara had found out I was flying in from Vietnam, she had taken a month off from her summer job in a shoe store in Toronto so she could join us. She was going to the University of Toronto and doing a commerce degree so she could be just like her dad. And she wanted to join us so it would be just like the good old days. But there were no good old days, I told Gail. She shrugged.
All the way through Kentucky–Ohio–West Virginia–Pennsylvania–New Jersey–New York–Connecticut–Massachusetts–New Hampshire–Maine–the ferry crossing of the Atlantic to Nova Scotia–the drive down Highway 101 to the town of Nolen, I remember writing in my journal:
I hate the person in the back seat.
I hate the person in the back seat.
Die Die Die.
Die Die Die.
Tara said she wished she could have my inspiration and write so much.
Gail was the only one insured to drive the car, so Tara and I were always the passengers. Whenever I wanted to sit in the back, Tara would jump in the back first. Whenever I wanted to sit in the front, she would. If we stopped for a pee break and I wanted to take a walk, she would follow me. When I read a book, Tara asked which one. She wanted to listen to commercial radio and we wanted to listen to mixed tapes. She talked incessantly about the good old days, how quickly high school went, how much she missed home and all the fun we had when we were sweet sixteen, how we were always best friends. She had seen Samuel in Toronto. He was studying biology. She never thought he’d go to university, she said. It was weird seeing him there. It made her homesick. He’d seen her and waved. She said she felt embarrassed. She never really knew him, she said. I was the one who knew everybody.
* * *
Pete is still standing out there on the dock. It’s been about ten minutes. Maybe he’s meditating. Maybe he likes this macabre industrial marina. Maybe he thinks he needs to be my security guard. Or see if his colleague’s lonely wife might be interested in giving him a little action because he’s having an extended mid-life crisis. His black shoes like beetles outside the porthole. It hits me I know nothing about him, or what he is actually capable of. There’s no phone on board and no gun. I feel a panic attack building. It’s been building for a long time. My life is over.
At the table I make a plan: I’ll start the boat. Right. The wheel and the throttle are outside — so I can get the boat running, but it will be tied to the dock with the engine going and us not escaping. Us: I’m thinking about the boat as my companion now, something I’m responsible for. The shoes are still there. I look through a drawer in the galley and pull out a knife. Armed.
Pete keeps standing there and I keep looking at his feet. And then I see that letter from Tara and think again about our road trip through the United States. At the washroom stop on the interstate, Gail had rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe the way Tara was behaving, how childish she still was. I was furious and asked why she had let her come along in the first place, which made Gail feel bad. Sorry. It’s just that Tara never really had any friends, and it’s so pathetic you can’t help but pity her.
We went back outside and Tara was leaning on the car between the front and back doors. She asked me where I wanted to sit. The back, I said. That’s where she was going to sit. I see, I replied. I opened the door anyway and got snug, leaning on the cooler with my feet out the window. Gail ran back to the washroom for paper towel and Tara leaned in the window and hissed, “Why do you always have to have your own way?”
I shook my head and shut my eyes. Maybe I’d get lucky and she would explode before I imploded. I don’t know what happened to her grandma’s girdles but she was wearing a unitard under all her clothes to slim her body, to try to keep all the bitterness and insecurity from leaking out her pores.
We stopped in Boston for the evening. Most hotels were booked so we were lucky to get a ritzy hotel room and not have to sleep in the car. Tara grabbed a bed for herself, saying Gail and I could share. Gail took a shower and came out in lacy underwear. Tara whistled and Gail frowned — even her patience finally thinning. Tara looked at me and said it was just that the two of us were too fat to wear stuff like that. But I’m not fat, I said. I remember the strain in my voice, how I wanted to yell, If I have fat, it’s my fat. Leave my fat alone.
Nova Scotia. I was so glad to get out of the car I didn’t even look at Tara. They dropped me off at my parents’ house and I said farewell, breathing a sigh of relief. The relief choked up when I was in the sun at the beach two days later and Tara waddled over. I told her I was leaving for Vancouver in a few days, so I had to relax. It was a long drive. I was doing the drive alone. That was fine with old Tara. She said she’d just sit there and read.
It was the book I’d been reading in the car on the drive up to Canada. I lay there in the sun and wished I was already heading west. And I wanted to scream, go home go home go home and let all my air out, but I didn’t. Then she said she wouldn’t mind getting a lift to Vancouver with me, taking a road trip. She didn’t want to go back to Toronto. She didn’t want to go back to university. She started crying. Then she wiped he
r nose on her arm. The snot stuck to her arm hair. I recognize lonesome when it oozes out. Then Tara said I should wear a one-piece, not a bikini. It was more flattering for someone with a body like mine. I sucked in more and wondered again if I would implode. The only place I was safe was inside my own fat body.
But right now I’m in my body stuck on this boat. Pete’s still out there. The waves lap against the side of the boat and I hear the shoes click away. I peer out a porthole on the dock side and see Pete, tall and thin like Anthony Perkins in Psycho. He walks up the gangway and over the main wharf.
I’m alone. The clock says eleven. Ten hours until Bob’s return. It’s ten hours that won’t end. I grab a book I need to reread for my dissertation. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, a reconstruction of a journey, a journey of many kinds. It is based on the logbooks of Crowhurst, a competitor in the first single-handed, non-stop round-the-world sailboat race in history, the Sunday Times Golden Globe race of 1968.
Donald Crowhurst was desperate to prove himself, and very proud. He was an inexperienced sailor (as far as being prepared for zooming around the world alone), out at sea in a poorly prepared boat, the Teignmouth Electron. His boat was an early trimaran and should have been covered in fibreglass, but because of time pressures and delays, the plywood deck was covered with a coat of paint instead. And so at sea Crowhurst had problems with a boat that cracked and rotted and leaked. Unlike the traditional sailboat, trimarans and catamarans sit on the water rather than in it. There isn’t a lot of digging in, and in storms one runs the constant risk of pitch-poling: running down a big wave, smashing the bow of the boat into the water and then flipping over — just like pole-vaulting, only you go upside down. And you die — a major fear of Crowhurst’s. But a bigger fear of his was telling the truth. To himself. That’s something I understand.
* * *
It’s after midnight and the boat rocks and rocks in the wind and rain. I’m in a flannel nightie, combat boots, and a leather jacket. The small heater provides a bit of warmth and a constant whir that muffles the sounds from outside.
Crowhurst was no dummy. It didn’t take long for him to figure out he could never complete the journey. But Crowhurst had banked everything on winning. His business in England, Electron Utilisation, was failing. This was his chance to turn it all around. Prize money, publicity, all the opportunities awaiting the winner. So he pretended. He never left the Atlantic. He radioed in a fake course with vague positions. He kept a fake logbook and planned a rendezvous with himself when the phantom Teignmouth Electron sailed back into the Atlantic. Placing second or third would mean his logbook wouldn’t receive the same brutal scrutiny first place would bring. If he could carry it off.
The romantic Frenchman, Bernard Moitessier, was in the lead, sailing without a two-way radio — he said it destroyed the purity of solo sailing. In letters fired from a slingshot to passing boats, Moitessier explained how he had decided, after rounding Cape Horn, that life in Europe was insane. He had no desire to return and headed to the South Pacific to spend three years on a remote atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago.
While people were busy debating the apparent madness of Moitessier, Donald Crowhurst was actually going nuts. With Moitessier following his heart, Crowhurst was now neck and neck with Nigel Tetley, another British sailor, who was driving his boat into the waves trying to catch up to the imaginary position of Crowhurst. Tetley strained his boat too far and it sank. Now he was sitting in a dinghy at midnight, awaiting rescue.
* * *
Two a.m. I’ve been on deck four times now. Pete hasn’t come back, thank god. The wind is still blowing strong and the boat keeps rocking. I try to sleep but the hideous shape of the lantern swaying sends me stomping back up on deck, convinced we are adrift. We are still at the wharf. Shining the flashlight around, I scan for perverts. Relief. The light of the neighbours still burns. I’m not really alone. So I creep off the Snapper and sneak up to the side of their boat. Just need to see another human, even one asleep. It’s a night light. There is no one on board. I’m utterly and completely alone. It’s just me and Bob’s dreams, tossing from side to side.
Back in the boat, I sit on the bunk. I’m terrified and covered in sweat. I can’t sleep because I’ve realized the boat’s lower in the stern than the bow. We are sinking from the fucking stern. My heart is pounding and I’m hyperventilating. I do deep breathing. I get control. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe we aren’t sinking. I take a glass and put it on the floor. It rolls to the stern. So I rip up the cover over the diesel engine, expecting to see water flowing in. Nothing. At this point I notice the fuel injector pump is broken. The neglected engine is idle in every way. So much for escape. I hop back to the bunk, knocking over some books.
* * *
Four a.m. The fates propelled Crowhurst to the lead. His logbooks show his descent into lunacy as he realized he would be found out. Reality drove him mad. After developing his own psychotic, religious-type philosophy in logbook entries concerning mostly “the game” (which he felt he now understood), Crowhurst began a countdown and made his final entry. Then, accompanied by his broken chronometer, he jumped overboard. So much for Donald Crowhurst.
The Teignmouth Electron was found floating abandoned on the Atlantic, with the logbooks awaiting inspection. Crowhurst died in this bubble of crazy, but the truth cruised on, awaiting discovery.
* * *
Dawn. As grey light breaks on the horizon, I sigh into the now-gentle wind. I’m on deck, leaning on the mast, drinking instant coffee while wrapped in the sleeping bag. I hold an umbrella up to the soft drizzle. I can jump to the dock if we start sinking. No perverts can creep down below and surprise me. I can see the horizon. I’m steady. I’ve been sitting on the deck since 4:14 a.m.
Standing up, I begin to open the hatch to go below. I’m hooked to the safety line in case of an unanticipated huge gust. It’s like I’m on a leash. I unhook. I realize now how this must look . . . how things have always looked. The adult forgets what the little kid knew and vows are betrayed until, the moment when it’s clear, at some stage you can’t pinpoint, you begin plotting the course of your own sorrow. Never be with anyone who doesn’t lift you up, Samuel said.
Morning brings a whole new perspective. It’s time to redefine adventure. To inhabit myself in my own way. And be in the world the way I am.
I go below and get dressed before climbing back on the deck with my backpack. I rip up Tara’s unopened letter and chuck it in the dark water. The pieces of paper float on the waves and the current quickly pulls it all away.
* * *
My face reflects in the bus window, and when I press my nose to the glass, I see the morning sunbeams and shadows marbling the road and streets and trees as we speed by en route to Vancouver. It’s the same thing, people behind me and beside me going on about Y2K and the approaching End Times. But it doesn’t bother me. We won’t know until New Year’s Day and there are a few weeks of living before then, and not a day to be wasted. I’ve got my CD Walkman on and the radio is playing Cher. I switch it to the CD and Emmylou Harris sings in her tremulous soprano about not knowing why she forgot to say goodbye — but I know. Sometimes you don’t need to. I giggle and feel my lips against the window, my humid breath blowing back warm on my cheeks. I have survived the night. I have returned from my strange last voyage and my sturdy body is my own boat.
Insomnis
A car screeches into her dream where she is tiny and sitting on a sunny lily pad and then she is furious and wide-smacking awake in the dark city night of her room as the car screeches and squeals away leaving rubber on the road, taking her precious and precarious sleep with it. The sheets are soaked and bits of far-off laughter float in the open window on a humid current of air, cutting through the thick summer night, coming over from Gottingen Street, from the parking lot behind the house, from yards and sidewalks, in through the window, to the woman who won’t sleep between now and dawn.
The doctor supposes she has transient insomnia. “From moving so much?” she says. He laughs. Well, yes, from that too. But he means short-term insomnia. As opposed to intermittent — on and off — or chronic — constant — insomnia.
“But I thought it would be better when I moved home to Nova Scotia,” she whispers.
“Maybe it will get better,” he says, “maybe when it’s winter, when the air is cool.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “It’s always worse in the winter. And then it’s not just insomnia — it’s seasonal claustrophobia, too . . . winter.”
He laughs. “Location, location, location . . . maybe you should move out of the city. Maybe you should move to a better part of the city. My diagnosis is chronic bouts of transient insomnia. Stress-induced. Go to sleep . . . think about moving somewhere nicer,” he whispers, his finger on her nipple.
The doctor turns his head on the pillow and his lips touch her earlobe and he exhales wet breath and slowly spreads his fingers over her neck. He murmurs a story about whitewater canoeing and stars and pretty things until he snores deeply and falls into sleep with his leg across her stomach and hand sticking to her ribs. It’s the fifth time he’s found her late-night dancing and the first night she’s brought him home.
Outside, a woman’s shrill voice catches in the thick hot air: “Here, kitty-kitty.” A car starts in the parking lot outside. Kitty does not come and the woman hollers again as the car backs up and then drives off. “Kitty-kitty, come in now. It’s past late, Lister. Kitty, you stupid kitty, it’s way past late.”
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